The gardener knew another fitful night of sleep was laid out gently before her. That she would anxiously drift off into it. Wearing one of the au pair’s shirts. Clinging desperately to the hope that she still existed somewhere in her mind. She would allow her heavy eyes to close in whatever awkward position she could lay claim to until she was no longer able to fend it off.
She gingerly woke from her strange dream. A dream that haunted her often night after night. A dream that found her trapped in a world without her Dani. Longing aimlessly for her until she would wake again and inhale the fact that she was...to be sure...no longer alone.
The au pair’s hand barely grazed the cotton that covered her shoulder as the gardener allowed herself to slowly wake: taking in the calm of finding herself once more. Her mouth curled into the slightest of smiles as she stretched against herself. Her bones cracking almost soundlessly as they pushed against her muscle and skin.
“Hey there.”
The au pair’s voice all but drifted into the room and found itself lit on the gardener’s skin.
“Hey there, Poppins....” she lazily replied as she allowed herself to spin in her chair until her legs fell over its arms as though the chair itself was cradling her in them.
The au pair smiled broadly. A grin that should be reserved for someone you hadn’t seen in years, not someone you’d sen only hours ago. But it was that grin that she had always greeted her with. Warm and innocent. Unafraid and unburdened. It covered her face like a mask as she all at once gingerly and clumsily made her way onto the chair.
“You think it’s big enough for both of us, do you now?” The gardener shifted into the curl of the chair and held the au pair against her as they bent simultaneously. The gardener moved her fingers through the long blonde hair that spilled out before her until it exposed the softness of the neck beneath it. It was there she tenderly pressed her lips and then her forehead, as she entertained sleeping there once more. But soon, like treasured moments all do, this too came to an end.
Dani bounded from the chair with an unusual burst of energy. Jamie lounged against it’s warm silk covering as she watched Dani busy herself in the kitchen not far from her. Her long, rose colored t-shirt hung just past her hips and dangled over the pale, bare flesh of her legs until it was again covered by the slouchy fabric of athletic socks that didn’t match one another. She hummed to herself mindlessly as she tucked her hair neatly into a loose ponytail, leaving a few stray tendrils to frame her face...and Jamie laughed each time she would huff to blow one from her eyes.
“You could tuck them behind your ears, you know, Poppins...keep them out of your damn eyes and my damn breakfast.” Jamie made her way across the kitchen and eased her arms around Dani’s waist as she watched her clumsily scramble eggs. Picking pieces of shell from them as she continued to purse her lips half-cocked to blow her hair from her cheeks. Jamie laughed as she released her arms and lifted them to pull at the loose hair, tucking it behind Dani’s ears synchronously and then placing her lips gently on the soft love of Dani’s left lobe. Dani leaned into her kiss and cooed as she reached to turn off the oven.
“There’s so much I want to do today. So much.” Dani whispered and the longing in her voice started as delightfully playful but buried deep inside of it was a note of melancholy. Like a child in a shop face to face with every toy and game and candy and dream that they had ever imagined: only to be told that they could have none of them.
“One day at a time. No rushin’ here. Alright?” Dani spun herself in Jamie’s arms as she spoke. And Jamie studied her face, encouraging it to smile.
And gradually, it did. Dani’s face lit with a smile that bared all of her teeth and in that moment she believed Jamie. There was, in fact, no rush. But as Jamie moved to plate the eggs and carry the pan to the sink...nodding at Dani as she did...Dani was reminded that there was trouble lurking just below the literal surface. That the very thing that gave her life was waiting...lurking...promising...to eventually bring her to it’s opposite. Jamie turned the water on to rinse the steaming pan but when she felt the very energy in the room shift...she turned it back off. Leaving the pan to rest in the sink as she took Dani’s hand, their fingers easily intertwining and playing at each other as they laced.
“Let’s just forget this part and skip ahead...” Jamie started and Dani nodded appreciatively, almost giddy and in fast forward.
“...Bad TV and even worse tea?” She finished and the two women shared a laugh. Loud and hearty and long as they peppered it with kisses, moving awkwardly but perfectly from the kitchen to their room. The TV was, oddly, already on. It filled their room with sounds of a re-run Jamie must have seen before as she realized she could anticipate every word. And as the two collapsed into the bed, the gardener realized she had lost all track of time. Was it night? Day, perhaps? The day of the week was even stickier to pin down. It unsettled her but she forced it off. Begged it to keep it’s distance.
Jamie slunk into the thick down of their comforter and soon Dani was tucked neatly at her side. Jamie stroked her hair. Kissed her cool cheek. Watched her as she was lost in the television. Her eyes seemed to stare right through it. Jamie absent mindedly ran her fingers up and over the smooth curves of Dani’s calf first. Then the swell of her knee. The suppleness of her thigh. Until her hand pushed secretly into the hem of her underclothes. Jamie could nearly feel the heat of her center.
“About that tea...” Dani whispered shyly, pushing her thighs together and moving from the bed with the modesty of a teenager that had never been touched. She giggled to herself as she walked towards the door. Her blonde tendrils again on her face, skimming her neck and collarbone.
“Take me with you.” Jamie called to her, “Please. Take me with you.”
There was no tea to fetch. There never was. Dani wouldn’t drink from a mug for fear of her own reflection. It started to wash over Jamie like a memory. Dani had turned and was studying her as her thoughts pained her expression, mirroring the slow burning sorrowful realization.
And the au pair smiled. A grin, warm and winning, but curled in a blanket of apology. She tucked a stray wave behind her ear...let her eyes linger on the gardener...and then moved through the door.
She wasn’t inches past it before the gardener could no longer see her. Or hear her.
Or feel her.
She was gone. Slipped away and tucked into a memory. One as real and right as anything happening at any time. But a memory none the less. The gardener felt pushed into her bed by an unseen and imaginary force. Unable to move. Unable to follow. She pushed through the murky air that suddenly engulfed her and found her chest with her clawing fingers. There she felt the string that had long since encircled her neck. The string that tenderly looped the claddah ring the au pair herself had once worn. A ring to match the one on The gardener’s left hand. She felt her chest rise and buckle under her fingers as the unbearable grief of being left behind claimed her. She whispered into the night.
“Dani.....Dani....Dani....”
She heard the hallway just outside her room come back to life. Slowly at first, almost inaudible. But a slight and dainty trickle of water. Coming at first from the bathroom down the hall. Then heavier...like a rush of water...that sounded just outside of her door. Soon it was echoed by the dripping faucet in the bathroom’s sink. Only to be mocked by the same dripping from the kitchen. It flooded the gardener’s ears in every sense. She slammed her eyes to it and wished she could do the same with her lobes. She continued to clutch her chest and whisper her lover’s name as she willed the darkness of her nightmare to be over.
And soon enough, over it was.
Her eyes fluttered open and her hand still clutched her neck. This was not a stranger to her. Instead it was how she woke from every night’s sleep since the once she woke to find Dani gone. And it was not limited by the time of day: every nap, every moment of slumber or peace ended this same way. In nightmares usually reserved for those who hovered somewhere between here and there.
But once the initial shock subsided. Once the gardener took enough deep and cleansing breaths to realize where and when and who and how she was...she resigned herself once more:
That the pain of losing someone is worth the joy of loving them. That if existing in a dream or a memory that allowed her to feel the skin of the au pair or tuck her once again neatly into her side...that if that meant ending with the pain of losing her? Well...that was a dream she would welcome night after night, sleep after sleep. If it meant that for one small fragment of time: the au pair knew her once more.
The weeks and months ticked by. A series of moments thread out in a line of events that now felt like hurdles to the gardener. Things that would happen or doors that would close. Each one bringing her closer to a finish line that she never lost the faith would include her au pair.
She clung to people like Owen. Finding bits and pieces of memories flecked in him. She ate with him often. Their laughter and stories of Hannah and Dani often making them nearly come to life and dance in the sparse candlelight of his restaurant.
But the gardener was plagued. A dull voice in her head at first that over the months following Dani’s loss seemed to grow and grow exponentially. A voice that merely reminded her of what she already knew.
So, much like the au pair before her, she woke one morning with a resolve to leave. To leave their small apartment behind. To leave with it the memories they had created there. The hopes and dreams they had cautiously watered like plants. And to return to the very place that the au pair had. To what she had come to admit, whether she wanted to or not, was their first home. The place that didn’t just take her from her...but it had, in fact, brought her to her as well.
The gardener moved back to Bly. She set about maintaining it. She went about Hannah’s jobs. Owen’s jobs. And of course, her own. Working to keep it as finely manicured as it had ever been...even as it fell so deeply into the hills surrounding it that no one much noticed it anymore. It became tucked into memory. No visits from Henry or the children. Even Owen had clearly chosen to leave Bly where he believed it belonged: in a forgotten and tortured past.
But the gardener? Even as she moved from her makeshift bed in the greenhouse...to the bed that had held the au pair those long years ago...she found a continued and growing sense of peace on the grounds.
None more than when she found herself barefoot on the banks of Bly’s pond. A pond that had once held fear and unease. A pond that had held them so captive. And a pond that held her love captive even still. It called to her now in the way most bodies of water do: with a quiet and peaceful calm that washed over her like it’s small rippling currents.
She cleared the brush surrounding it. From the earth and from her own heart. And she manicured it’s shores like she was dressing it for a wedding. Planting not only wildflowers and native plants that would cover its lips in color, but the roots of trees: weeping willows and the like, that would grow and shade and cover it for all of the endless days laid out before it...and long after the gardener was gone.
As time passed it was those trees that covered her when she took her lunch along its banks. Her toes dipped into the water as she spoke to it. It was those wildflowers she would tiptoe through in the moonlight. Barefoot. Whispering to herself as she watched the light dance on the pond’s glassy top.
“It’s you...it’s me...it’s us.”
She would fall gently into a tumultuous sleep...night after night, knowing that one day the ending may change. Opening her door. Calling for Dani to visit her even if only in her subconscious.
The gardener aged. And as her body began to fail around her, it did not bring with it the sadness or fear that it would for most. No...she welcomed the passage of time. She rejoiced in the decomposition. She wandered the water’s edge until she no longer could. And she fell into her sleep, longing for the au pair night after night with the same freshness as the day she lost her, until one night...peacefully at rest...
The gardener’s own time had come.
Naturally.
She awoke to the sounds of birds over Bly. Tiptoeing in Dani’s rose colored shirt she caught a glimpse of her beautiful pond: now lush with colorful growth and covered in her trees that danced in the morning breeze. She smiled at the thought of it.
“Look who is finally awake...”
The gardener froze at the lilting sounds of the voice from behind her. This dream was different....her words, the sounds, even the smells.
Jamie turned to see her there. Her long T-shirt hanging lazily from her shoulders. Her blonde hair in a loose pony tail as messy as their relationship. Her slouchy socks rising over her calves. The gardener stared.
“My god, I love you, Poppins.” She whispered to herself, so faint that Dani had to close the space between them to hear.the au pair’s eyes were as glossy as the water’s surface and they cried even as she smiled. She smiled a smile so broad and warm that it turned into a light for them both. Jamie felt herself begin to cry softly even as she laughed.
And the au pair took her hand softly. She held it there for a long while as they let their eyes dance over one another.
“I knew you’d come.” The au pair whispered. And the gardener pulled her quickly into her arms. Holding her there against her pounding chest.
“It’s you. It’s me....” Jamie whispered into Dani’s hair as she inhaled its soft rosy scent.
“It’s us. Forever.”